


all the ghosts

by seventhe



Series: Momentum [2]
Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: Baron Castle is a character, Brandy - Freeform, Eidolon Meta, Eidolons, Ghosts, Historical, Implied Relationships, Mist is also a character, Summons & Summoning Meta, friendships, the importance of love, the need to heal, this exploded, why the fuck is this so long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 22:50:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21126551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhe/pseuds/seventhe
Summary: Sometimes Rosa wanders the castle like a ghost. She isn’t used to the feeling: a healer is always within their body, aware of every cell, every beat of their heart, every twitch of their nerves. But Baron Castle takes something from her, makes her feel less-than, and she needs to understand it.It makes her feel like a shadow. But whose? Cecil’s shadow, a damsel in distress? Kain’s, a love never fulfilled? Perhaps the shadow of her own mother, bright Golden Jo, who’d saved so many lives? She is the shadow of all the Queens that have been. She stands in the shadow of Kings.“I am not a shadow,” Rosa says aloud.The walls tell her she is. She will not listen.





	all the ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flonnebonne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flonnebonne/gifts).

> i have wanted to write this piece ever since i wrote momentum and finally the lovely Flonnebonne commissioned it from me. AND WAITED LIKE FOURTEEN MONTHS BECAUSE I AM A TRASH FIRE, but anyway, here it is.

Rosa knows the town of Baron. Baron’s in her veins, laced into her blood: the crooked stones of the town, the painted beams of her childhood house, the smell of grain and iron at the markets. The town feels like hard stone and the stomping of boots and the laughter of children; her home feels like a warm blanket and the scent of the apricot pastries her mother used to make. She feels the White Chapter down to her very pores; it smells of healing, sharp like mint and hemlock, cool like the scent of snow. 

Rosa knows the walls of Baron Castle, and walks them easily, unseeing, but: she doesn’t feel like she knows the castle. Not yet.

Baron Castle is full of shadows. It’s full of ghosts, of a history written in blood and edges, writ in the dark. It doesn’t scare Rosa, but she cannot make her way into it, yet; the castle’s closed off to her, somehow, and for Rosa to be a Queen, the Castle must be a Home.

It isn’t difficult for her to accept duality. She’s always been more than one thing. To be a White Mage, to be a Queen, to be Cecil’s wife and Kain’s friend: they’re all pieces of her, facets of pearl. She does not know why Cecil struggles with it so, but to Cecil, identity has always been driven by armor.

Maybe it’s because she’s a mage, because of this magic in her veins; but Cecil bears it too, if he was given it late, and he seems no more comfortable than she is, only in a different way.

Rosa is driven to heal. She will find the parts that are broken and mend them.

———

She watches Kain at dinner and thinks of yearning. 

Kain has returned from — from some sort of journey. He has returned from Mount Ordeals, and then from Eblan, and there’s something in him that seems settled, if not healed. Rosa can feel it and wants to press her hands to it, wants to whisper the words that will untangle this knot, but she will not. Kain has had enough magic in his head; hers will not help.

He and Cecil are talking and Rosa sips at her soup and watches. It’s creamy and rich, with butter and basil and potatoes, and she can taste the life of the herbs growing and the roots of the potato plants bearing their fruit. She doesn’t know whether other people taste this way; she doesn’t know if it’s her magic, or if it’s just her mind being fanciful. The taste of pepper and garlic lingers on her tongue. It’s delicious.

Cecil and Kain are making staggered conversation. It’s almost like before, except it will never be like before. Kain speaks of Edge and Rydia with a fondness that’s cutting Cecil, sharp with something he hasn’t realized yet is jealousy. Rosa sees it and smiles to herself, because that is the sort of wound she can heal with words.

She knows what Cecil and Kain are to each other. She’s always known. It has always been the three of them, Kain on Cecil’s left and she on Cecil’s right. Only Cecil standing in-between. 

Should it bother her? She wonders. It doesn’t. She’s happy to lay those ghosts to rest, and would never begrudge her own love the piece of his heart that Kain has always owned. She’s forever been aware of it. The only problem has been that Kain thinks he has to compete — as if he isn’t already a part of both of them.

———

Sometimes Rosa wanders the castle like a ghost. She isn’t used to the feeling: a healer is always _within_ their body, aware of every cell, every beat of their heart, every twitch of their nerves. But Baron Castle takes something from her, makes her feel less-than, and she needs to understand it.

It makes her feel like a shadow. But whose? Cecil’s shadow, a damsel in distress? Kain’s, a love never fulfilled? Perhaps the shadow of her own mother, bright Golden Jo, who’d saved so many lives? She is the shadow of all the Queens that have been. She stands in the shadow of Kings. 

“I am not a shadow,” Rosa says aloud. 

The walls tell her she is. She will not listen.

———

They’re preparing for bed when Rosa feels it: a shadow, like the ones that stalk the castle, an awareness she’s never had before. Cecil watches, bemused, as she follows the feeling across the room and over to her dressing room. 

“There’s something,” she begins, but Cecil doesn’t interrupt; he’s learnt over the years to always trust the instincts of the White Mage.

Walls of gowns, made by seamstresses happy to clothe their new Queen; Rosa’s lived for so long in her own armor and the robe of a healer. She isn’t used to this; her mother had been the head of the White Chapter, the king’s own healer, but that hadn’t made them wealthy in this sort of way. Rosa lets her fingers trail against the lush fabrics - velvet, silk, muslin, a hundred textures beneath her fingertips - and listens. 

She reaches the back of the room, shelves full of more slippers and boots than she cares to wear in a lifetime, and presses her fingers to the corner that’s _shadowing_ at her. Rosa runs her fingertips up the corner of the wall and something clicks, and the wall draws back.

“Hold on,” says Cecil from behind her, and she should have sensed his presence, as tied as they are; it’s sweet that he still wants to protect her. After all the things they’ve been through, she can’t take it as insult; she knows Cecil has every faith in her abilities. It’s just his way. She loves him so.

“I’m not afraid of this castle,” Rosa says, because she isn’t. She may not yet be its friend, but it at least knows that she’s Queen.

Cecil presses up behind her, a solid warm weight. “No, but Baron Castle is older than we know, and I’d rather you don’t take an arrow to the heart from some mechanism behind the door.”

“Idiot,” Rosa says fondly, Protect and Shell stirring around them; between her own ability, her affinity for Cecil, and his own White Magic, Rosa doesn’t even have to gesture or say the words anymore: she wills, and the magic responds. 

Together they pry the wall open and Cecil enters first, as is his way. Rosa follows, eagerly, because this is the thing that has been trailing along the edge of her periphery for weeks. It’s a circular space - must be one of the turrets; she hasn’t memorized the castle yet - and decorated strangely. There are tables and shelves near round half of it, full of old books and strange equipment. The other half looks like part of a sitting room; a couch and a chaise, two upholstered chairs, all looking as if time has done them poorly. The room smells of dust and age, but not mildew or mold; Rosa breathes it in, and smells something bright-magic, like cinnamon or spruce. There’s something very faint protecting this space. 

“This is curious,” says Cecil, turning in place to examine the room. Rosa says nothing, but walks the long circumference of it. The books look ancient and may be too old to safely read; she’ll have to bring up the librarian to advise. Some of the equipment she recognizes from having crafted potions and ethers in the White Chapter; some of it is utterly unfamiliar. The tapestry of fabric on the furniture seems to tell a story, but she can’t quite place it yet; she’ll need to see whether they can be at all cleaned -- not for use, but for historical records. 

The room _feels_ old. Rosa isn’t sure how she knows this, but she thinks it may have been hundreds of years since the last time someone walked here. There’s a presence, that faintly tingling spell that seems to have preserved the room from destruction if not age. This was a special place, to someone.

“This feels,” she says to Cecil, but she can’t quite put it into words.

“Ancient,” he says. He gives her his crooked smile, the wry one he only uses with her. “It feels like there’s nothing in here that can’t wait until the morning.”

Rosa sighs, nearly desperately, because there’s something in her that has been looking for this place since they took up residence here -- but Cecil is right. 

“I’m having a look at it tomorrow,” she tells him as they reclose the door and retreat to their bed of furs and blankets. “I’ll cancel at the White Chapter; they don’t really need me this week.”

Cecil’s smile turns soft and broad, blurring over his face like a benediction. “Whatever you wish.”

\------

White Mages rarely dream. It’s a gift of the magical heritage, which understands not only the weave between mind and body and soul, but the drastic toll that healing can take on the body. Most White Mages are blessed with sound and dreamless sleep, unless under extremely unusual circumstances.

The night they discover the room, Rosa dreams. She dreams of King Odin on the throne, how he’d taken in Cecil; how he’d smiled at her when she first started coming with her mother, when she befriended Cecil and Kain. She dreams of the shadow of Odin in the basement, the strange Eidolon with the familiar voice, and how they’d fought to a victory not of defeat, but of mutual respect. She dreams of Rydia cupping her magic in her hands, glistening green orbs that shimmer like candlelight. 

\------

The next day Rosa sets out to the service hall in search of help.

She finds it odd to have servants; her family was certainly well-off as compared to many others, but it had just been her father’s Dragoon salary, her mother’s wages, and her desire to help. She’s asked many times whether she can assist in their chores, but they’re all proud to serve Baron’s newest royalty, and they sweetly refuse her with kind words. She finds their choice of career noble, no less honorable than a Knight or a Dragoon here in Baron, although that may be a unique view.

Their head of household is a man called Sir Mychal Alexander. He seems to come from a long line of Baron service, and knows most of the castle better than she ever will. Despite that, he’s somewhat brought up short when she describes the room behind her closet.

“May I see?” Alexander is venerably old and unflinchingly polite. Rosa smiles at him.

“Of course,” she says, and leads the way into their rooms. Alexander drops his gaze to the floor as he walks round their things; Rosa smiles again, charmed at his sense of propriety. It’s just blankets, a pair of Cecil’s boots, a discarded book on the sofa; none of it is private, nor does it need to be, but Alexander still averts his eyes as if this look into their life is somehow intimate.

The wall-door opens easier this time, as if it’s pleased to see her return, and Rosa gestures Alexander into the strange room before following him. It still has the feeling of something old, brittle, its preservation spell nearly spent. And underneath that, there’s the hum of something else the room holds, something Rosa can’t pinpoint.

“Oh,” Alexander breathes. “My lady. You’ve found the Queen’s Bower.”

She glances at him, surprised. His eyes are wide in reverence, his body reflexively bending into a bow towards one of the windows. “The Queen’s Bower?”

Alexander looks back at her, smiles. “Yes.” The wrinkles beside his eyes crinkle up with his smile. “The histories say one of our most well-known Queens was given a private space only she could enter. Her own little room, where she could practice in peace.”

“Practice?” Rosa glances around the room, noting the stacks of books, the equipment scattered on tables, thick with dust. “What was her art?”

“Oh,” Alexander says, and there’s something old and ancient in his voice when he answers, his eyes focused on something Rosa can’t see. “She was a Summoner, my lady.”

———

It has always seemed strange, to her, to have Baron and Mist so close geographically and yet such tense relations between the two. Rosa’s never studied much history - no real need to, for a girl who knew her future lay in battle with two men - but in her lifetime, the road to Mist has always been guarded and had never been walked until a false king sent her two men through the caves.

Golbez’s minion, Rosa remembers; Caignazzo. A fiend of water. And as it gathered the crystals, it sent Baron’s finest knights off to destroy the home of the summoners. Why? 

Mist had been secretive and isolated, but had never been threatening. Rosa’s seen the power Rydia wields, knows its strength, but still finds it odd that the fiend had taken such specific pains to raze a small village to the ground. 

———

She leaves the room in Alexander’s capable hands with directions to start - carefully, cautiously, delicately - cleaning what they can. He’s gathered additional staff, two of her maids and one of the lads from the kitchen, and they’re all sneaking glances around the room with awe and wonder. She’d like to clear out the dust, brush up the furniture. See what the tapestries look like; check whether the equipment is working.

Rosa stops to send a messenger bird to Rydia, and then heads to the small library in Baron Castle’s basement. The shadows she feels here are thicker, as if the stone knows it’s underground: buried, below the surface. She has a shawl, and clutches it tighter: but Rosa holds her head high, because she is Queen here, even of shadows.

The library is barely a library: it’s mostly for storage, the records of the castle’s many years, interspersed with occasional personal belongings of this or that royalty. It’s tended mainly by Old Rachael, who’d been the terror of the kitchens for years before she’d grown too old and arthritic to do anything save putter through the history left here. Old Rachael has done her best to start some sort of catalogue for the room: an index of indices, a list of histories. She’s another one from a family that has served the Castle for generations upon centuries.

Rosa finds her dozing in one of the thickly cushioned chairs the room boasts, and moves silently so as not to disturb her. Stacks of notes, parchments, old crumbling leather around stacks of wrinkled paper - Rosa winds her way along the shelves, her fingertips brushing at the careful notes Old Rachael has left in her spindly, shaky handwriting.

The shadows murmur. _King Ban, Queen Cordelia, Age of Farms._ _King Odin, Consort Francis, Age of Roses. _Rosa wonders whether these titles are real, recognized by historians, or if Old Rachael has come up with her own fanciful system. Rosa isn’t quite sure what she’s looking for, but she’s hoping the castle will help. _Queen Regina, First Mysidian War._ _Regent Murdock, Reign Of Terror._ She’s struck with the sudden _urge_ to pull all of these stories from their shelves, to dive into them, to spend her days learning these pieces, the foundations Baron Castle has been built on. 

_King Odin, High Summoner Aurelia. Age of Mist._ And then, _Queen Jennica. Lady of the Bower._

That seems promising. Rosa’s fingers tingle as she carefully pulls out the wicker basket; she looks down at the books and papers inside and the shadows whisper, _yes._

———

Rosa remembers her mother well — anyone who knew Golden Jo remembers her brightly, or not at all. Golden Jo, laughing and smiling always, bright hair braided golden and copper like a crown round her head; Golden Jo, the sun her shyer, more reticent father Davidon orbited with gentle, careful worship. Rosa had loved her mother fiercely, had _yearned_ to be like her as she grew, although she’d caught more of her father’s gentle and deliberate ways than her mother’s boisterous mischief.

_Golden Jo,_ the Dragoons had started calling her, when she first started riding out with them: golden for her hair, golden for the glow of her magics, protecting her husband and his regiment. Golden for laughter; golden like the sun, not mid-day but as it sets, the last bit of bronze as it vanishes.

Golden Joanna, who had cast and cast until her fingertips split, until her ears bled; a golden thread trying to sew together a regiment of Dragoons, all of them ragged and broken from a herd of behemoths gone rabid. Golden Jo, who’d cast every atom of magic remaining in her body: golden no more, hair bleached white by the effort. Only two Dragoons had survived, and Davidon was not one of them, and Lady Joanna Farrell was unrecognizable by the time they made it back to the castle, all of them crippled and wasted. 

Rosa had become a White Mage anyway.

———

She enlists Cecil and Kain as they come in for dinner, and orders the meal served in their study. She explains to them about the room, and what Alexander had said, and they’re both so eager to help assuage her sudden, fierce curiosity. Rosa _needs_ to know the history of this room that has so carefully revealed itself to her, like a sudden ache.

She selects a book, worn with age, and hands a stack of old parchment to Cecil. Kain takes a leather folder and opens it to another collection of old papers.

“Did you ask Old Rachael?” Cecil asks her.

“She was sleeping,” Rosa says, smiling. “I wasn’t going to bother her.”

Kain snorts. “Isn’t the library her job?”

“Technically.” Rosa carefully opens the book. The spine is cracked, and some of the pages show water damage. “But she’s old, and she’s earned herself a nap or two.”

“This is just records of good purchases.” Cecil sets the page down on the side table next to him. “As is this. And— oh.”

Rosa glances up, and Cecil smiles at her before starting to read. “This bann to celebrate the marriage of King Odin VII of the line of Odin the First to the High Summoner of Mist Lady Aurelia on this day the sixth of Wintermarch, and to announce the...” He stops, squints, continues. “To announce the successful alliance of the Kingdom of Baron and Its Neighbor the Valley of Mist and all the people thereof.” He lowers the page, glances back at Rosa. “There’s some more, but I can’t really read it.” 

“Did you know anything about this?” Rosa asks, Cecil and Kain both. Raised in the Castle, maybe they’d had a different education. “I had no idea Baron and Mist were once part of the same country.”

Kain shakes his head, but Cecil frowns. “Hold on,” he says, fingers pressed to his mouth. “It was back when I was learning geography, right? The scholar said something like…” He scrubs his hands over his face, an incredibly endearing gesture, and Rosa catches the way Kain’s mouth drifts towards a smile at it; Kain is watching Cecil as closely as she. “Not all the mountains were real mountains, or that the mountains rearranged themselves, or something. Young me wrote it off at the time as odd, to study maps more, but he was implying that they hadn’t always… been there.”

“They’re mountains,” Rosa says, but Kain shakes his head and gives Cecil one of his fond looks.

“There weren’t always mountains between Mist and Kaipo, either,” says Kain, and Cecil meets his eyes with old familiarity.

“That’s true,” he says, “and Rydia was just a child then.”

Rosa knows, conceptually, that Rydia had summoned an eidolon who’d torn up the land between Mist and the Kaipo Desert, leaving Kain in Baron under Golbez’s influence while Cecil proceeded to Kaipo. She knows, because Cecil had told her as she recovered from the sand fever. She knows, and she believes, but — it’s always a bit of a shock, that second where she has to remind herself that their friend does have the power to move mountains.

“I hope there’s a map in here,” she says aloud. “But if the countries were allied, if they were one country, why separate them? Why would Mist - grow - an entire range of mountains between themselves and Baron?”

“Bad marriage,” Kain drawls, and Cecil snorts a laugh.

Rosa gives them one last lingering look; they lean towards each other, unconsciously; maybe she’s the only one who sees it. She needs them to heal, because she needs both of them to be whole, herself.

———

That night Rosa dreams of mountains: from on high, like the view from an airship, like the one that took her to Kaipo the first time. She looks down through clouds and mist and watches as mountains grow and fall, shift and split, like flesh healing and splitting. She watches, and then drifts off and does not dream again.

———

The next day she finds Sir Alexander as soon as she and Cecil are dressed and ready, and leads him and the team he has assembled into the chamber. _The Bower,_ Rosa thinks; _the Queen’s Bower._ It already feels refreshed, after a preliminary dusting and sweeping, but it isn’t yet welcoming; the same buzz sits right below Rosa’s skin, a notice rather than a threat.

She asks Alexander, “What do you know of the Queen’s Bower, sir?”

Alexander smiles at her. His face is textured with years, wrinkles at the corners of eyes and mouth, proof of his decades of service. “I knew it existed,” he says, with humor in his voice Rosa can’t quite entirely catch. “Not where it was, though.”

“You know this castle better than anyone,” she replies, and grabs one of the dusting rags; if she’s going to be here, talking, she can clean at the same time. One of the maids looks at her, his face aghast, but Alexander just chuckles and allows her to pick up the next odd implement from the table and wipe it clean. 

“You know, my lady, that my family - the Alexanders - have served here for generations. There are stories, passed down, for those of us who keep the Castle.”

Rosa hears it in his voice, the proper title of it. “So what do you know about it? Whose was it?”

Alexander sets down the bowl he’s polished and shifts what looks like a lamp into a better position. “Names elude me, my lady, but this room was built specially for Baron’s first and only Summoner Queen. She came here to…” Alexander trails off in thought. 

Rosa waits. She sets down whatever it is she’s just cleaned off, picks up the book that was next to it. It’s plain, no title on the cover, and when she opens it there are pages written in a fair hand. 

“Baron’s efforts to ally with Mist were honorable,” Alexander says after a long pause. “But they were not executed well for either party, or so the story says. The Queen came here, a safe place for her to commune with her Eidolons, but they say she fell in love with one instead.”

“Fell in love,” Rosa says, too surprised to hide it in her voice, “with an Eidolon?”

Alexander smiles and Rosa again gets the feeling that there’s something more in his smile than she is able to read, as if he’s smiling at her and at Baron Castle in its entirety at the same time. “I believe it used to be more, well, common,” he says delicately, and Rosa can’t help but smile back. 

“But what happened?” She glances down at the book in her hand. There are dates, marking a calendar she barely recognizes, one that went out of style a century ago. “Why are Baron and Mist unable to be — allies? United?”

Alexander sighs, and sets his cloth down on the lamp. “I cannot say, my lady. The first Alexander to serve Baron, she served under that Queen. But we don’t know the whole story.”

Rosa pauses in her own cleaning and looks around the room. She imagines a Queen wed to someone for politics, only able to see the one she loves in this small enchanted Bower, only for as long as her power might hold. It isn’t the story she wants: this room is lovely, but it feels melancholy now, as if it’s dressed with wasted potential. 

“Did the Queen — did she marry willingly?” She has to know. Rosa knows customs haven’t always been so kind.

“Yes,” Alexander says, with a tone in his voice as if she’s found the key to something. “She loved the King Odin, as well.”

“The King’s name was Odin?”

Alexander’s smile goes soft, and his gaze settles on the walls of the castle again. Rosa is reminded of the feel of Barontown’s cobblestones and the smell of its shops and the sense of warmth she gets when she walks familiar paths; she wonders how Baron Castle must feel to someone like Alexander, who goes only by his family’s name, whose entire genealogy has been shaped by service to these stones and their people. 

“All of the important kings,” Alexander says, “have been called Odin.”

———

Their supper that night is fish poached in wine on leafy greens; Rosa can taste the sunlight they’ve consumed, the flashes of rain that watered them. It’s familiar; it tastes of Baron, in a way she isn’t sure she could even put into words, if asked. 

Cecil and Kain seem to have quarreled. Kain is sullen, sulky, far too aware of every movement he makes as if trying to attract as little attention as possible; Cecil, on the other hand, stabs at his fish and makes moon-eyes in Kain’s direction when the other man isn’t looking. Rosa wants to laugh, but in the kindest way; how can she so clearly see what they need, but they be so blind? _Midwinter approaches,_ she thinks. Maybe she can gift them some of her clarity.

She and Cecil have been pulled together since the first, but it has never been about two: it is always about three, and three, and three; all of them and all of their different roles, overlapping so discreetly that from a distance they look like they match.

———

It turns out that the book Rosa accidentally took out of the Bower is, in fact, someone’s journal. 

She isn’t quite sure yet, because spellings and letters are all a bit off of what she’s used to, unfamiliar curves and slices she has to puzzle out like a child reading at her first scroll. But between the dates and the words she does recognize, it appears to be a diary of some sorts, tracking dinner recipes and magical incantations right alongside someone’s view of a day.

Rosa spends almost the full morning in bed, reading it, caught up in its olde language and the secrets it must hide. The writer is wonderfully witty at times, and seems overly involved in the operation of the castle from what she can decipher; there’s a tale about two hams that has her collapsing in laughter against her pillows, struggling to breathe.

It’s only a knock on the door that pulls her from its pages. Rosa climbs out of the pile of furs and pulls her robe more tightly around herself; she opens the door, already apologetic. 

“My lady,” her maid begins, but then Rydia breezes right past and into the room in that straightforward, no-nonsense way that she has and embraces Rosa tightly with a laugh. 

“Oh,” says Rosa, and she nods at the maid before closing the door and grasping at her friend. None of the years have been kind to Rydia until now, and Rosa holds the other woman in her arms and feels that strange sort of peace she feels from Kain, now — and wonders. 

“Gods and Eidolons, that trip took it out of me,” says Rydia, pulling away and tossing her vibrant hair from her face to look Rosa in the eye. Rydia has no artifice and little tact; it’s one of Rosa’s favorite things about her. Rosa returns the look: Rydia has changed since last Rosa saw, something settled around her eyes and in her shoulders. Her smile is easier. She has a new ornament in her hair, all red gems glittering with a single green feather, and Rosa recognizes the craftwork of Eblan, although she will not tease. 

“Did you magic yourself the whole way here?” Rosa asks, fondly.

Rydia shrugs, and her lips turn upwards in a smirk. “Can’t let myself get out of practice, can I? Go on, get dressed then, you’ve something to show me and I want to see it.”

Rosa laughs then, pealing upward, and moves towards her dressing room. She knows Rydia has never been shy with her human form, or anyone else’s, which Rosa finds quite convenient and incredibly comfortable. 

“Look on the nightstand,” she says as she hangs up her robe and slips into silk undergarments. “There’s a book. I think it’s a diary.” The maids have stopped giving her looks for preferring to dress herself; it’s just ridiculous, Rosa thinks, and their time can be better spent elsewhere.

“A _diary,”_ Rydia repeats, sounding both excited and amused. Rosa thinks about it, assumes Rydia has had no opportunity to keep any sort of thing herself; she wonders whether Rydia should, since she stands as the last Summoner they know of. 

Once Rosa is fully dressed, she emerges from the dressing room to find Rydia sat upon their bed, eyes wide, completely engrossed in the small notebook.

“Isn’t it interesting?” Rosa asks. 

Rydia looks up and to Rosa’s surprise the other woman’s eyes are full of emotion, near tears. “I’m sorry,” Rydia says, her voice uneven. “It’s just that this is how — this alphabet, this style of writing. It’s how my mom used to write.”

“You can read it,” says Rosa, intrigued. “I was struggling my way through this morning, but — you can read it?”

“Yeah.” Rydia grins and it’s lopsided but so, so genuine. “This is what I learned to read— how I learned to read, as a kid. This is from _Mist_.”

———

Rosa calls for bread and cheese and sausages for breakfast before she and Rydia enter the Bower. Rosa heads on over to the table where she found the diary, but when she turns around Rydia’s stopped at the door, having taken a step, maybe two. Her eyes are distant and her hands clenched but she doesn’t look angry; it’s more eager than anything. 

“There’s a voice,” says Rydia, in the tone that one might give a prophecy if one were so inclined, as if she’s speaking to something so far outside the realm of the castle it may as well be on the moon. Then something snaps and she shudders, looks over to Rosa, and grins, color high on her cheeks. “Help me move the carpet?”

The rugs have been swept to the best of the staff’s ability, and now Rosa bends to help Rydia roll it up from the edge. Immediately she sees it: lines, cut and carved into the floor, delicately painted sigils and intersecting angles. They get the carpet half-removed before it becomes too much of a burden, but it’s obviously a large ring around the center of the room, and Rosa can feel that buzz on her skin again, that not-quite-magic she’s felt before.

“It’s a summoning circle,” Rydia breathes, and walks the circumference of it, her toes delicately tracing out the sigils as she goes. “They haven’t been used in _ages,_ really, I’ve certainly never — but Mist had one, an old defunct one they just used to show us, give us the old _respect your elders!_ speech kids always get, that kind of thing. It doesn’t work,” she adds pointedly, glancing back up at Rosa. “It’s too old, too disconnected. Why is it here?”

“I think it belonged to the Queen,” Rosa offers. “Did you know — do you know that Baron and Mist tried to ally once? Join their nations?”

Rydia’s face does something inscrutable and inhuman. It isn’t offputting, nor is it odd to those that know her, but Rosa’s reminded again that her friend is not entirely as human as she herself; that Rydia was raised in the Feymarch, and many of her actions are very fey, indeed.

“I don’t know very much about Mist,” Rydia admits, after a pause so long Rosa wonders whether she’s been talking with her Eidolons. “But there’s a library, in the Feymarch. When I was growing up I read everything I could get my hands on.”

She retraces her steps around the arc of the circle, coming back to stand next to Rosa. “I remember reading a book about Mist and Baron,” she continues, “although for the life of me I can’t really remember what it was about. I thought it was a fairy tale, right?, I was a _kid_, and it had a whole bunch of Espers in it and a lot of magic and fighting and — I really thought it was just someone’s story, someone’s fiction, just using the names of real places.” She stops at Rosa’s side, turns to face the circle. “Now, I’m wondering.”

“Rydia,” Rosa says before she can fully think it through, “is it possible that the Summoners _made_ the mountains around Mist?”

Rydia laughs, surprisingly. “Absolutely,” she says, and her grin at Rosa turns otherworldly again. “They say in Mist, that we built our own wall around ourselves, and I thought it was just another story until…” Her voice trails off, and Rosa looks up to find Rydia looking down into her own palms like there’s a story writ there in the alphabet of Mist itself. There’s a ring on her pinky finger, something new; Rosa thinks to ask about it, later. “It’s entirely possible,” Rydia says to her hands. “I’ve seen crazier things happen.”

Rosa reaches out, takes Rydia’s hand in both of hers. “You’re one of those crazier things,” she says, “and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“You’re just saying that because you want me to translate that diary,” Rydia teases, but she looks pleased nonetheless, and entirely more human.

———

It’s Alexander that comes up with their breakfast tray; he sets it gently on one of the cleaner tables before turning to Rosa and asking, “My lady, would you have help today?”

“Yes,” Rosa replies, “gladly. Rydia and I will be going through some of the books, but I’d still like to work on those tapestries, see if we can get them a bit cleaner.”

Alexander glances over Rosa’s shoulder and then it’s like his entire _being_ just lines itself up, shoulders straightening and heels aligning in a way that makes Rosa think his stance is echoing all the way down to the buried bones of Baron Castle. “My _lady,_” he says, in an entirely new intonation Rosa doesn’t think she’s even heard before.

“I’m sorry,” she hears Rydia say, and turns to watch her friend slowly approach. Rydia’s eyes are narrowed, and her head is tilted as if she’s trying to hear some faint noise. “Have we met?”

“This is our head of household,” Rosa says, hating the way the words come out of her mouth - but he is; that’s his _title_ \- “Sir Alexander. Alexander, this is Rydia, High Summoner of Mist.”

“Don’t call me that,” Rydia murmurs, with cheek, but she’s still looking at Alexander oddly.

“I know who you are, my lady.” Alexander sweeps her a bow, and there’s something in it - some angle; some turn of his wrist or dip of his knee, something, it’s too fast for Rosa to track - that’s entirely new. 

“Oh,” Rydia says. Her hand comes up to her mouth, fingertips on her lips in surprise. “I recognize you now.”

“Have you met?” Rosa asks, because it feels like there’s an undercurrent to this conversation she isn’t picking up. Rydia’s been here a few times; certainly she’s run into Alexander before. It can’t be anything odd; Alexander’s the head of household, Rosa’s sure he checks with all the guests to ensure their absolute comfort. That must be it. 

“We’re familiar,” Rydia says, and her smile blooms wide across her face, friendly and inhuman at the same time.

———

They spend the day in the Bower. Rydia sets herself down on the cleanest of the couches and starts going through the handwritten books; the printed ones, she says, will be the less interesting texts, as Mist still lacks its own printing press and thus has purchased them from elsewhere. Rosa makes a mental note, because here is potential aid Baron can offer Mist as reparations — if they’re able to untangle this bit, this odd historical mess they’ve found themselves in. Rydia’s more interested in the rare, the personal, and so she settles with the handwritten notebooks and talks to herself as if the books intend to respond. 

Rosa continues to wander the room. The equipment that she can identify is all for the mixing and crafting of potions; it’s all high-quality, and she claims a side table for it, intending to donate it to the White Chapter. She feels like they’ll be tickled, having real Baron antiques to work with. In those days everything was made from solid metal - no alloys - so it’s as robust as it is fine.

“Rosa,” says Rydia suddenly, her voice urgent. “Rosa, Rosa. Come here.”

Rosa comes; perches herself on the edge of the couch next to her friend. “What?”

“She’s,” Rydia hisses, and glances at Alexander; the man’s facing away from them, diligently sorting through the contents of a crate. “She’s in love with the King _and_ with an Eidolon,” Rydia says in this small soft voice that would tell Rosa stories if she only knew the language. “She’s here, in this castle, and she loves both of them.”

Rosa watches as Rydia’s lovely eyes close, slowly, and she wishes she knew what was in the breath her friend takes, ragged and determined. 

“I have to do some research,” Rydia murmurs, “but I’m afraid I know how this story ends.” It’s a sad thing, and it sits in the air between them oddly.

Alexander glances up, a question: _do you need assistance?_ Rosa smiles, demurs, and despairs.

———

Dinner is a flighty thing. Rydia’s distracted; Kain’s distracted, watching her, trying to offer a comfort Rosa’s rarely seen him generate; Cecil’s distracted, watching Kain with what he doesn’t yet realize is longing. And of course Rosa watches them all; it’s as if she’s behind a wall - shell, protect, regen, reflect - that protects her and lets her see into these spaces where the others aren’t,

She tries to make conversation, tries to patch over the gaps but — this isn’t a wound, these are caverns not even Golden Jo could heal; these are the lines in palms, scores in armor. Rosa decides, quite frankly, that she’s done trying to do this work for now.

Kain leaves with Rydia after the meal and Rosa sees it in Cecil’s face, the way it shutters; he drinks of his wine and finishes Kain’s too, and her heart breaks for her love, over and over, even as the rest of her is fondly calling him an idiot.

When they retire to their rooms Rosa stops him; presses her palm to his cheek, rises up on tiptoe to press her mouth to his. Cecil has always kissed like it consumes him — all of their days, as young adults through the dark armor and to what he is now, Cecil has a singleminded focus when he comes to Rosa, all of that skill and intellect dedicated entirely to her mouth, like he wants to take her apart from her lips alone. 

Rosa’s always loved that; she also loves that Cecil will demur to her, when she wants, and tonight she wants. He gently removes her clothing as if it might tear; she removes his, less careful but just as reverent. She presses him down into their bed, pulls the silks and furs up around them as best she can; sinks down onto him, this stretch and push and pull as holy as anything else she’s ever touched in her entire life.

Cecil’s eyes wrench shut, then open again to watch her take her pleasure against him; his hands run rivers from her hips up to her shoulders, her cheeks, her hair, and then trail down over her breasts like rivulets. She has her hands on his shoulders, one clasping at his hair; Rosa has always been the tactile one: she’s the White Mage, and she needs skin under her hands and hipbones beneath her. She grinds her hips, creating the physical contact she knows Cecil needs: the pressure, the touch, skin-to-skin; as sharp as his dark armor used to be, before he shed it at the top of a mountain. Cecil has never, ever been averse to pain.

He grips at her waist as she comes, keening, atop him; he flips them over, then, driving himself into her until he loses himself as well.

After, petting his hair, Rosa murmurs: “You need to talk to him.”

Cecil shudders, entirely akin to the way he shuddered as he came. 

———

Rosa’s dreams are shadowed; she moves in near-darkness, somehow sure of her path but unsure of her steps. She knows she is within the Castle Baron; she feels it stretching above her, high to the sky, torrents and arms reaching to the clouds; she knows the pieces that are buried, stone markers deep underground, marking the dead. 

———

The next day they’re back in the Bower. Rosa’s helping Rydia sort through the texts: there’s a stack of personal journals, a stack of published books, and a stack that neither of them are able to read. Rydia’s face has shifted into its otherworldly spectrum, although she’s still cheerful enough about the task and interesting things they’re still finding. She’s been distracted for a while, paging through an illustrated guide to local plant life, remarking on the flowers she’s only seen in the Valley of Mist, laughing occasionally as she and Rosa compare the names they know this greenery by.

“It’s _dogsweed!_” Rydia laughs, and taps at the illustration again with her finger. “Doesn’t matter how pretty it is, it’s still called dogsweed.”

“Houndstooth,” Rosa corrects, but she’s smiling too. “We don’t use language like that here.” She makes the pretentiousness a joke, and Rydia giggles, turning the page.

“Good morning, my ladies,” says Alexander from behind them, and when Rosa turns around, she sees Old Rachael on his arm, crooked and bent but looking around as if this room is the most lovely thing her old eyes have ever seen.

“Good morning,” Rosa replies automatically, standing to approach them, reaching out to take Old Rachael’s hand. “I’m so glad you’ve come today. So much of this will need to go into the library and be sorted.”

“That’s why I’m here, lass.” Old Rachael’s voice is soft, quivery, shaky like her hands, but her attitude hasn’t changed a bit. “Figured an old pair of eyes wouldn’t be amiss.”

“_Oh,”_ says Rydia from behind Rosa, and it’s that tone of voice again: Rosa turns, and Rydia’s glancing between Alexander and Old Rachael with wonder in her face. “It’s nice to meet you, my lady. I didn’t realize.”

Old Rachael smiles back in Rydia’s general direction and says, kindly, “Most don’t.”

Rosa certainly isn’t. There’s an undercurrent here, the same soft hum that skims along her skin as the room tries to catch her attention: _look. Listen. _Rosa’s much too polite to say anything about it now, but she resolves to ask Rydia once they’re in private. 

“This is Jennica’s old room, then,” Old Rachael continues, as if she knew the Queen in question. “Bless her heart. She fixed it up quite nicely.”

Rosa gestures for Alexander to help Old Rachael sit down on a nearby ottoman. “What can you tell us about the room?”

Old Rachael takes her time getting comfortable, wrinkled lips pursed in thought. “Oh, it was cursed, you see,” she says finally. “Terrible accident. The King and his Summoner. _Really._ Should have taught them not to play with that kind of fire.”

“What happened?” Rosa urges, engrossed suddenly, her mind whirling. 

“She did,” Rydia says cryptically, “didn’t she?”

“Yes, my dear, of course she did it.” Old Rachael settles back into the ottoman with a hum.

Rosa looks over at Rydia. She’s going to ask, now, she _needs_ to know what’s singing along her skin.

Rydia’s voice is soft, slow: reluctant. “She loved a King and an Eidolon equally, this Summoner. And there are ways to — to tie together a human, genuinely offering their life and their body, to the spirit of an Eidolon, so that they can walk a little closer to the human world.” She takes a deep breath, looks at Alexander, looks at Old Rachael. They both nod. Her gaze turns to Rosa.

“It’s called _becoming a fayth,_” Rydia says softly. “She made the King the fayth for the summon we call Odin.” She pauses. “You remember.”

Rosa remembers the basement of Baron Castle: the familiar voice of the King she knew, the sharp sword; eight knotted legs beneath a figure wrapped in darkness. “But how…?”

Rydia looks into her palms again. “The Eidolons I carry,” she begins, as if telling a secret. “They’re the Eidolons of old, and we commune the old-fashioned way.” She flicks a smile up at Rosa; “That’s fighting,” Rydia adds, and shrugs, as if apologizing. “A fight for respect. A fight as a test. The trust builds the bond, and lets me make the call.”

Rosa cannot imagine; Rydia’s magic is so _different_ than hers. Rosa’s magic is flesh and blood, touch and feel, the absolute reality of rent skin and blood soaked clothing and bones reknitting under her fingertips: the healing peeling away from her _own_ blood and nerve and bone, the power she bears applied through fingertips and palms. There’s nothing fanciful about White Magic. It is absolutely the more brutal art.

“But the Eidolons are — they don’t exist in the way we do, really, even though you and I can go walk into the Feymarch and speak with them like humans.” Rydia’s fingers curl, idly, then flicker as if she’s casting a spell. “They’re also spirits, which is what allows me to call Leviathan when I could not summon, say, Edge.” Her smile goes deeply, _terribly_ fond after that for a moment, and Rosa sees her touch the ring on her smallest finger, and the gesture fills her with happiness. “Using the fayth to bring an Esper into a world is - it isn’t forbidden, no, it just isn’t - common; most of them don’t like to be _tied._” Rydia looks apologetically up at Alexander. “But then sometimes, there’s an Eidolon and a human that are ...willing.”

There’s a pause, and then Old Rachael speaks up, her voice soft. “They say it went very wrong, lass. Cursed the entire room.”

Rosa doesn’t know why, but it makes her very, very sad: a woman trying to bind her two lovers; both of them eager and willing, for love of her; and somehow, losing everything in one giant mistake — it’s nearly too much to bear. She isn’t sure where this sadness in her is coming from - this happened so long ago; it’s over and done - but it’s crushing in her chest, the absolute waste of it.

“May I,” Rydia asks, faltering, in a way she hasn’t been since she arrived. “Can I be alone, in here, for a bit? There are,” and she breathes it in and out. “There are ghosts here.”

“Of course,” Rosa says, well aware of it, their presence prickling her skin to goosebumps.

———

Rosa finds Kain hovering around their rooms shortly after, and Rosa decides that it’s time.

Her heart’s still breaking with sadness, and the castle’s shadows are thicker than they’ve ever been at midday, and Rosa’s suddenly full-on aware of all the possibilities of heartache and all the risks no one ever takes for the ones that they love. She’s also, suddenly, brimming with love herself: for Cecil, for Kain, for her friend Rydia; for poor King Odin and Lady Aurelia, so long ago: for Castle Baron itself. She pulls Kain into the study and shuts the door, and just looks at him for a moment.

“I was looking for Rydia,” Kain says, and he won’t meet Rosa’s eyes. 

“She’s taking a moment,” Rosa says gently, and then reaches out for Kain’s hand. “Are you two—?”

Kain laughs. “No. Well, yes,” he amends, “but really, no.”

“That is not at all an answer,” she replies, fond with it. Kain finally looks up at her, and that mask he usually wears is cracked, his eyes open and broken. 

“Rydia and Edge have both,” Kain begins, and Rosa suddenly feels like she’s hearing confession in the White Chapter: those souls who have no one else to turn to, no kind ears to listen, who come for a different kind of healing. “They’ve helped, and they’re why I’m here. But they’re also…” This pause is different, and full of regret. “They’re also not why I’m here.”

“You’ll need to go to him, Kain.” Rosa lays it out between them. Should it hurt? It doesn’t, although Kain looks struck with it, like she’s slapped him.

It has never been hard for Rosa to understand. Kain loves her, yes, with the fierce and misguided love for an ideal; something Golbez (Zemus, perhaps, moving through all the world’s hatred) had twisted up into a poison thread through Kain’s innermost thoughts, forever tainting it. But Kain loves Cecil practically, straightforwardly, the strength of brotherhood and the passion of a comrade-in-arms; and Cecil loves him, desperately, the same way Cecil loves Rosa, the same way Cecil loves everything. One of these loves has been ruined, but the other? It can still be healed; it can still be mended.

“I wouldn’t dare.” Kain turns away. “You’re wed now.”

“Does it matter?” Rosa wears no ring, no token; she doesn’t need it. She can feel Cecil’s presence in her heart, as she always has. “You knew we could.”

“As you _should,”_ Kain snaps with heat, “you _belong_ with him,” and Rosa just shakes her head.

“It has always been the three of us,” she tells Kain, reaching out to touch his face, turn it back to hers. “He needs you, but he will not allow himself to ask for it. Not from you, and not from me.”

“I wouldn’t dare ask it of either of you,” Kain says, his voice deep like an echo. “It isn’t my place.”

“Your place is _with_ him, like it’s always been,” Rosa hisses: suddenly, abruptly, terribly angry; hurt on top of the sadness that’s seeping into her from Baron Castle’s walls, a swirl of emotions and regrets and why, why are the sins of the heart so indistinguishable from its blessings? She could live here, happily, with all the ghosts around her laid to rest: as only a White Mage can.

Kain looks at her, really _looks_ at her for the first time in years. 

Rosa remembers the Tower of Zot; Kain’s Dragoon hands, clumsy as they’d never been before, tying her ropes. Kain’s eyes, alternating between a blankness that terrified her and a despair that pained. She remembers the way they kept her muted, her magic chained and silenced: no escape for her, no exit; and no way to reach into Kain’s mind, to undo the tangle she could feel there, no esuna, no heal. She remembers simultaneously being glad Kain was there and being terrified for him, wanting him _safe._

Rosa has always just wanted to heal. To mend the broken. To protect those that are hers. And is that not what a Queen does?

Her voice is soft, resolute, absolute. “Kain. I am not pushing you to bed with my husband — though I’d be happy either way. I am telling you, he needs you, and — and I need you, too, I need you _there_ for him.” And here it is the final truth: the last ghost laid to rest. “Whatever is between you, work it out. I _need_ you at his back.”

_When I cannot,_ the unspoken words say. Because Rosa has never been only one thing: she is wife, and healer, and now a Queen; and Cecil was a Dark Knight, now a Paladin, now a King: a husband, and a lover, and a friend. 

Kain is still looking at her as if she is the answer to all things. Slowly, Rosa brings her hand up to cup his face; his eyes flutter shut as he turns into her palm, like benediction. She steps closer, tugs his face down to hers.

It is the only kiss they have ever shared. Kain’s lips part in surprise, still, and then he leans into her desperately, divinely, an entire world of _what-ifs_ breathed between their mouths, writ with their tongues.

When they separate, Kain nods to her, and says, “I will try.”

———

Rosa finds herself walking the basement of Baron Castle, the long corridor where once they met the spirit of their King: where they battled him, in another form, physical enough that they all bled for it. She stops, and puts her hands on the stone wall, and closes her eyes. 

An Eidolon tied to a man tied to this castle; an Esper spirit, meeting the spirit of a King wrongfully murdered, becoming a Summon. This is part of what Baron Castle has been trying to tell her. This is one of the ghosts to lay down. 

Rosa wonders what Rydia hears when she Calls.

———

When Rosa returns to the room, Rydia is curled into a chair, a tiny circle of bright green and gold against the muted, faded colors of the room. 

Rosa walks over, takes her hands, kneels on the ground before the chair. “My dear,” she says, “are you alright?”

Rydia sniffles. “It was all so very long ago,” she says in the smallest voice Rosa’s ever heard. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m like this.”

“The castle remembers,” Rosa says, not really knowing what she means by it but meaning it anyway.

“She did,” Rydia murmurs. Her hand comes up to wipe at her eyes. “She did it. She tried to tie Odin to - Odin,” and she laughs a little. “I don’t even know how to call them; in my head, Odin is just… himself.”

“Do you know what happened?” It’s quiet, between them, in this little room full of sorrow.

Rydia nods. “She tried to bind them, to anchor her husband as the fayth, but as they were —there’s always a fight, you know, the old fashioned way.” It makes her lips quirk, the shadow of a smile. “And I think they were - halfway, or something, and — do you remember, what I told you Odin does, when summoned?”

“Death,” Rosa breathes. “He kills.”

“Yes,” Rydia says. “And do you — do you remember what happens when a Summoned Eidolon dies?”

“_Oh.”_ Rosa gasps. There it is, slotted into place: poor High Summoner Aurelia’s ghost.

“At that point, Odin was killing - himself, itself, I don’t know enough about the fayth - and as they fell, so did she. That’s how they would have found them: dead, on the floor in this Bower, with an Eidolon spirit half-tied to the throne— and no one left from Mist to understand what had happened.”

Rosa remembers Old Rachael saying the room had been cursed. It makes sense, now.

“I’m sorry.” Rydia glances up at her. “I wish it was a happier story.”

“We’ll just have to make it one,” Rosa says. 

———

Baron Castle is never silent, but for the first time, Rosa feels like it’s speaking _with_ her, rather than _at_ her; the shadows and ghosts are just a part of its whole, one long history, full of love and error and regret.

She finds Old Rachael twittering over some of the records from the room. Rosa has brought tea; she sets one next to Old Rachael and takes the other to a chair nearby.

“Why was Jennica the Lady of the Bower?” Rosa asks. “Rydia has — I know what happened to King Odin and High Summoner Aurelia, now. But what happened next?”

Old Rachael smiles into her teacup. “Baron accused Mist of using an Eidolon to murder the King. Mist accused Baron of murdering the Queen, claimed Aurelia was defending herself. The alliance broke, and Mist fled further into the mountains.”

“I can see that,” Rosa says, because politics rarely have room for magic, or mystery, or love. And she’s sure, now, after all of this, that Mist itself had fled into the mountains, entire ranges created in a desperate bid for protection.

“Jennica was their daughter,” Old Rachael continues. “And she had White Magic. Used it to purge the Bower of what had happened, told Baron she’d never call an Eidolon within the nation’s territory, took the throne and held it.” She cackles, a soft breath of air over the surface of the tea. “And she _almost_ kept her promise.”

“What do you mean?”

Old Rachael reaches out: one hand to her cane, the other to Rosa’s arm. There’s no deference here; Rosa is a friend and equal like any other. “Let me show you something.”

She leads Rosa into the corner and, nonsensically, presses Rosa’s palm to the stone. 

“I know the castle,” says Rosa, not understanding.

“Close your eyes,” Old Rachael orders, and Rosa obeys.

“The High Summoner had her own staff from Mist, that came here willingly for her, that served in the ways we have always served the Summoners. When we found out Jennica was going to purge out the Bower, some of us approached her with a ...an alternate solution.”

_We,_ Rosa thinks. _We._ Old Rachael is old, but not in an otherworldly way; but her family has served Baron for years. _And Mist before?_

Old Rachael puts her hand over Rosa’s, presses it into the wall. “It was Jennica who cleaned up the mess, yes. She tied Odin’s spirit to the throne, to wait for someone worthy who would give their earthly presence over to it so that it could become an Eidolon in truth. But she also tied a bloodline to the castle itself: a family line, men and women and those in-between, all ready to become the Fayth if the Kings and Queens needed the castle to wake.”

“For protection,” Rosa says, asking it, but her mind is saying, _Alexander._ Her eyes are still closed and she can feel it, deeper even than the echoes of the castle, bones buried beneath it. The bones are _in _the stone, and she can see turrets rising, cannons shining a piercing holy light.

“That’s it, lassie,” says Old Rachael, sounding pleased. “You see the trick of it though, yes?”

Rosa opens her eyes. “Protection, for the people of Baron, against enemies — but only useable by a Summoner.”

Old Rachael smiles, her cheeks creasing. “Jennica was still her mother’s daughter, you know.” She fumbles round her neck, brings forth a delicate silver chain. Hanging from it is a piece of crystal, unworked, the size perhaps of Rosa’s thumb. It’s a deep cloudy green, with a splash of bright red at its heart. It sparkles as Old Rachael turns it, staring into its depths. “You’ll find one or two other families who can trace their days back to Mist, who bear heirlooms like this one; they’re links to other spirits, little tiny calling cards.” She meets Rosa’s eyes. “Jennica did not leave Baron alone. She was her father’s daughter, too, and loved the city like we all did.” Old Rachael coughs. “We all wanted peace between Baron and Mist, too. That’s why we wear these still.”

_We,_ thinks Rosa. _We._ She reaches out, brushes her fingers against the stone. It screams defiance at her like a bird, its red wings spread in a fierce protection, the green of her own White Magic mixed with the red of flame, flame, flame. Rosa stutters, and steps back, as if she’s touched a hot stove. Her fingers tingle.

“Yes,” says Old Rachael, cackling. “I thought you’d like that one.”

———

Rosa is alone in the throne room, her eyes flickering back and forth between Cecil’s seat and her own. 

Golbez - or Zemus through Golbez, whomever - must have sensed that power humming so far below the castle’s walls, and set Cecil and Kain off to destroy those who would be able to Summon the very stones of the Castle against him. She isn’t sure she’ll ever be able to meet Alexander’s eyes without bowing herself, thanking all of his ancestors, all of these ghosts, for what they’ve been holding in trust, unbeknownst to any.

Baron is more than its Castle and its thrones, Rosa thinks. Baron is its people, as well. She is a Queen, and a White Mage, and a wife; she is a best friend, and will be a mother, some day. She is the keeper of this ancient castle, and she holds the fragile thread of peace between Baron and Mist in her palms. She is the caretaker, the servant; not in a long line of unbroken lineage traced back for generations, no. She has Golden Jo in her veins, and silent, solid Davidon: Dragoon and White Mage, archer and healer. She is a golden crown and the gritty green-white bloodstained casting of Curaga.

She walks forward, resting her hand on the arm of Baron’s throne: _Cecil’s,_ she’d thought, just a second ago. 

_All of the important kings have been called Odin._

“Not any more,” Rosa says, into the silence.

———

She tells the story over dinner, letting her fine rabbit-and-leek stew cool as she speaks. It spans years, generations, two cities and three bottles of wine between the four of them. It’s both like the end of their journey and not; Rosa feels Edge’s absence in the air, but Eblan is not a part of this tale. The four of them are.

Cecil listens, enraptured, to the tale of a Queen who tried to make her lovers what they were not, a King who loved her enough to try, and an Eidolon who did not understand. Kain’s face is shuttered, and Rosa wonders what he reads into the tale of a Queen with two lovers. Rydia’s face has shifted into that spectrum that reminds Rosa she is of Mist and the Feymarch both, her eyes wide.

She sees Cecil and Kain both start when she - falteringly - explains who Sir Alexander is, or what he represents, and what the Alexanders have meant. Rydia simply closes her eyes and sighs.

“I knew the second I saw him,” Rydia says, clutching a hand to her heart. “I knew, right here.” Her eyes open. “I probably should have said something, but I — I felt like someone should be on the Eidolon’s side. If that makes sense. I don’t know if he wanted it a secret.”

“Could you do it?” Kain asks, narrowing his eyes.

“Yes.” It’s simple, a statement of fact, and Rydia tilts her head nonchalantly as she says it. She’s sitting on a footstool, in their study, her bare feet against the rug, and Rosa doesn’t doubt for a second that Rydia could summon up the very bones of this castle as a weapon if she decided to.

“And Old Rachael?” Rosa asks, forgetting she hasn’t told that part of the story.

“_Old Rachael?”_ Cecil and Kain say simultaneously, and Rosa can’t help but laugh. They look at each other, and Cecil starts chuckling, and Kain gives him a genuine smile: Rosa’s heart is fit to burst.

“Also yes,” Rydia says, dropping it like a stone - green with a twist of red - that sinks far down into Baron’s depths. “And the other - talismans - too, now that I know what I’m, um, looking for.”

There’s a long silence. Cecil opens the door - they have asked for privacy tonight - and requests another bottle of the red. 

“We can’t let this story be told,” Kain starts, slowly. “Parts of it, yes, I think this is great history to share with the town, but.” He sighs, flicks his eyes towards Rydia, and then looks back to his hands. “I fear what will happen when Baron finds out her Castle is an Eidolon in disguise.”

“We can’t very well keep that a secret,” Cecil argues. “If we’re going to open negotiations with Mist, we should convey that we remember the story, and that we’re stronger together. Besides, it’s — secrecy about everything is kind of how Baron got all twisted around in the first place.”

Rydia’s staring off at something no one else can see, and Rosa gestures to her two men to draw their focus back.

“He’s fine with no one knowing,” Rydia says, her voice soft like she’s delivering prophecy. “Alexander. The castle. All it wants to do is continue to serve.”

It’s so poignant it brings Rosa to tears, unexpectedly. All of these people, these spirits — all the ghosts of Baron lining up behind her, now, whispering into her ear: _We believe in you. We believe in us. We are here for Baron._

_We,_ Rosa thinks.

“There must be something,” Cecil starts, and Rydia’s eyes flick to his suddenly: focused, that green-blue shade that has always reminded Rosa of the seaglass that sells so well in the marketplace. 

“What would you offer, King Cecil?” The words are ominous, but Rydia’s grinning, a bit cheekily, and Rosa relaxes. “Would you have your Castle cut from its fayth, to be sundered? Or would you offer yourself to such a binding?”

Cecil has taken her more seriously than Rosa, and is gaping now, and that’s when Rydia lets loose a merry laugh.

“There will be a time that you and I must sit across a table and make a treaty between our homes,” she says, her grin gone crooked, “but it’s certainly not now, after I’ve had a bottle of wine and you’ve ordered more.”

Kain looks at her entirely too fondly and murmurs, “You’ve spent too much time with Edge.”

At that, Rosa herself starts laughing, and Cecil joins in: last, but perhaps loudest.

———

The staff have cleaned, restored, renewed: the Bower is free of dust and dirt, looking lighter with the weight of age removed. The tapestries are clearer, and Rosa is pleased to discern that they seem to tell stories of the Eidolons she recognizes from her friend. The equipment has been removed, for donation among the patrons of Baron; two of the bookshelves have been renewed, and most of the room’s idle literature has been catalogued and arranged by Old Rachael’s meticulous eye.

“What will you do with it?” Cecil is beside her, his arm around her shoulders, holding her close. Rosa loves him with an absolute fierceness so strong she can barely contain it. “It’s yours, my Queen, isn’t it.”

Rosa ignores the question for a second. “Cecil,” she says. “My love. You know I will never ask for you as anything other than what you are?”

Cecil blinks down at her, turning to face her a little more clearly. This is the last ghost she can lay to rest.

“I loved you at your darkest point,” Rosa continues, “and seeing you in the light now has not changed the love I felt then. Nothing will. This is absolute,” and she feels an adoring smile break out across her mouth as she looks at his face, eternally dear.

Cecil’s actually blushing, although he leans down to kiss her, saying with his lips what he often has trouble articulating out loud.

“When Kain comes to you,” she says, infinitely soft, “speak with him. Tell him the truth. I will have and love all of you, Cecil,” and it’s a benediction now: unintended, but her mouth drips with grace, her own blessing leaking out into the words.

“I do not deserve you,” Cecil manages to say, and then kisses her again, this time with the passion of all of their years behind it, all of his own fumbling grace, the heart that remained unblackened. Rosa soaks it in, pouring herself back into him. There will be no fire, here; she will take those she loves as they are.

Once Cecil pulls away from her with a sigh, Rosa turns back to look at the Bower. It’s a cozy room, now that the windows let full sunlight in and the tables are shining and open. She’s had the furniture removed to storage, replacing it with much more comfortable fare. 

“I think I’ll use it,” she tells Cecil. “I think it — it misses being used, by a Queen and her art.”

Rosa has plans to Bless the entire room, to make it a haven of healing, to turn the summoning circle into a healing ring where the sickest and most injured of Baron’s people may come to soak in a White Mage’s power. She thinks of Golden Jo, who in the end was no more and no less than Rosa’s mother, for all their experiences; she thinks of Aurelia, and Jennica, and Rydia.

She thinks of soaking her own essence down into the stones, into the bones of this castle that are more human than not, so that in times of true danger there is — a piece a Summoner could call, yes, but there is also a piece a White Mage could wield.

Rosa rests her hand against the stone wall for a moment, and the shadows now speak to her, pull at her; the ghosts love her idea, and deep in the depths of the castle’s foundation, a sleeping Eidolon is having fond dreams in her direction. 

Her Paladin husband bends to kiss her again, and Rosa pushes her fingers into his hair and responds, because there is no division to her love: she is the sum of every part she has ever had, and she needs nothing more than this.

**Author's Note:**

> this entire piece is unbeta'ed. not because i think it doesn't need it - i'm sure it does - but because writing this was very important to me in a very weird sort of way, and i felt it was more important to keep it with all of its flaws and potential confusion and probably absolutely horrible abuse of punctuation than it was to make it perfect. this piece is a mood. i hope it worked.


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